{"id":16118,"date":"2018-01-25T15:19:06","date_gmt":"2018-01-25T23:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=16118"},"modified":"2018-01-25T15:26:29","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T23:26:29","slug":"a-symbiotic-relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/a-symbiotic-relationship\/","title":{"rendered":"A Symbiotic Relationship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dominic Erdozain\u2019s The Soul of Doubt<\/em> cuts a wide theological swath through the Reformation, Enlightenment, and into the Modernistic era of the 21st<\/sup> Century.\u00a0 He asks why was there so much religious violence when the command for Christians was to love one another.\u00a0 His hypothesis, drawing from a historical-religious analysis from Luther to Marx, concludes that the violence caused Christians to feel alienated from their own religion.[1]<\/a> He offers an illuminating narrative that explores the post-Reformation world and devotes much of his work to exposing the necessary relationship between religion and secularism.\u00a0 Erdozain says his thesis \u201ctraces an unbroken tradition of dissent from the Reformation to the Enlightenment.[2]<\/a>\u00a0 This post will examine the religious-secular relationship and look for connections, ideas, and solutions to the problem of spiritual warfare.<\/p>\n

First, I reflected on some Bayard and Adler practices as I approached Erdozain\u2019s theory that posits present-day Christianity was assisted and influenced by the post-Protestant Reformation movement of historical secularism and individual consciousness.\u00a0 My Bayard tools helped me stay on the periphery of Erdozain\u2019s debate and helped me avoid making it personal or emotional as his reader.\u00a0 I looked for themes, ideas, connections, and correlations between Erdozain and other authors, critics, fields of study, and ideas.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 The first connection I saw was on the book cover, which I suspect is an excerpt of Luther\u2019s 95-Thesis.\u00a0 I translated one section \u201cover the cliffs\u201d and wondered if that would reflect his narrative, that religion fell or was about to fall over the cliffs in the past 500 years.<\/p>\n

I used Adler\u2019s \u201cRule of 8\u201d to search for any of Erdozain\u2019s answers to the problem of violence and alienation that drove 16th<\/sup> Century religious leaders like Luther and Calvin towards opposing and secular positions against the Catholic Church.[4]<\/a> \u00a0One answer to the \u201cyears of religious wars\u201d was bad theology[5]<\/a>\u00a0 Erdozain said the bad theology was the type that tempts Christians to \u201cwithdraw\u201d from nature\u2019s law, believe their passions are God\u2019s will, and rejecting morality.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

Second, as I surveyed Erdozain\u2019s narrative, internal sources, and controversial conclusions on how God\u2019s Kingdom advanced during the past 500 years. \u00a0I related his relationships between religion and secularism to a type of symbiosis.\u00a0 In other words, is there a symbiotic relationship between religion and secularism?\u00a0 Is it good-bad, spiritual-worldly, or helpful-hurtful for the Good News of Christ? To answer that I will present some interesting relationships between the religion-secularism and spiritual warfare.\u00a0 My opinion about Erdozain\u2019s conclusions is that he did not go far enough to emphasize the influence of Satan during the 500-year span of time.\u00a0 Here is some interesting data from a simple word search of The Soul of Doubt<\/em> compared to spiritual warfare\u2019s 3-P\u2019s; Put it on, Pray, and Persevere.[7]<\/a> P1-Put it on (belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, shoes of peace, shield of faith, helmet of salvation, and sword of the spirit), P2-Pray, and P3-Persevere.<\/p>\n

The following results show how many times these words were used in the book: Truth-106, Rigteousness-27, Peace-35, Faith-413, Salvation-66, Spirit- 126, Pray-6, and Persevere-2.\u00a0 In addition, I ran some spiritual warfare terminology with the following results: Warfare-17, Devil-30, Satan-12, and Stand firm type comments-2. \u00a0What I see from this data and after reviewing his historical review from the Reformation forward is that \u201cFaith\u201d is his number one answer, solution, and spiritual position that readers of his work should adopt when trying to make sense of all the violence, struggle, non-religious, and un-Christian acts that were manifested in the past 500 years.\u00a0 42 times Erdozain attributes the problem of violence and associated influences on the evil and destructive nature of Satan or the devil.\u00a0 When Erdozain used Luther\u2019s analysis of the problem of violence I could see how Erdozain connects to a greater problem of spiritual warfare.\u00a0 \u201cThe weapons of our warfare are not carnal\u201d and the author says that \u201creligious violence was not only a sin\u201d but failed the Church\u2019s spiritual mission.[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

And fail it did, repeatedly as many Protestant Christians were accused of heresy. Here is another example of spiritual warfare at work: \u201cWho dare to attribute to Christ that which they do by the command and at the instigation of Satan!\u201d[9]<\/a>\u00a0 This shows how Christian\u2019s they called \u201cheretics\u201d were tortured and killed in the name of God. Henry VIII was notorious for killing 60 Protestants accused of heresy during the Reformation[10]<\/a><\/p>\n

Third, the outside-in look at Erdozain\u2019s work through reviews was quite interesting.\u00a0 One of his loudest critics is Jennifer Hecht, a self-proclaimed Jewish atheist.\u00a0 She challenges Erdozain\u2019s assumption that \u201csecular ethics, not intellect\u201d was the driving force that challenged and alienated Christianity during the post Reformation era.[11]<\/a>\u00a0 Hecht concludes that Erdozain\u2019s version of secular ethics are just Christian ethics used to fight immorality and violence while also protecting the churches established privilege.[12]<\/a> \u00a0I tend to agree with Hecht on her point that the key leaders of secularism like Spinoza, Voltaire, Darwin, and Marx were not motivated by a \u201cmoral conscious that had Christianity at its core.\u201d Instead, my research into the problem with Spiritual Warfare suggests that these leaders were motivated by Satanic forces, which influenced their philosophy of secular morality, relativism, and a widespread rejection God.<\/p>\n

I appreciate Erdozain\u2019s reference to the problem of evil, which resonates strongly with my problem of spiritual warfare research.\u00a0 He cited an 1893 ethics lecture by Huxley who used Scripture to call out Satan as the \u201cPrince of this world\u201d also warned his audience that \u201cScience could not brush aside the problem of evil.\u201d[13]<\/a><\/p>\n

In conclusion, Erdozain convinced me that there is a symbiotic relationship between religion and secularism.\u00a0 From the Christian point of view, I can see how the relationship exists, but conclude that it is not necessary for Christianity to survive.\u00a0 While I commend the author for opening the eyes of his readers to the real and ever-present threat of Satan, I wish he had gone further and pulled in the Pauline theology of the metaphorical principle of self-defense through the indwelling presence of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.\u00a0 I will forever be convinced that it is only through our obedience to the Word of God, to \u201cput on the whole armor of God\u201d that we can be fully used by God for His Divine Kingdom building purposes.<\/p>\n

Stand firm,<\/p>\n

M. Webb<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> V.M. Ehret. “Erdozain, Dominic. The Soul of Doubt: The Religious Roots of Unbelief from Luther to Marx.” CHOICE: Current<\/h6>\n
Reviews for Academic Libraries 53, no. 7 (2016): 1034.<\/h6>\n
[2]<\/a> Dominic Erdozain. 2016. “A History of Unbelief.” Chronicle of Higher Education<\/em>, March 18. 11. Academic Search Premier<\/em>, EBSCOhost<\/em> (accessed January 23, 2018).<\/h6>\n
[3]<\/a> Pierre Bayard. How to talk about books you haven’t read<\/em>. (Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2007) Kindle Edition, Location 245.<\/h6>\n
[4]<\/a> Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. How to read a book: The classic guide to intelligent reading<\/em>. (Simon and Schuster, 2014) 133.<\/h6>\n
[5]<\/a> Erdozain, Soul of Doubt<\/em>, 138.<\/h6>\n
[6]<\/a> Ibid.<\/h6>\n
[7]<\/a> Eph. 6:10-18.<\/h6>\n
[8]<\/a> Dominic Erdozain. The Soul of Doubt: The Religious Roots of Unbelief from Luther to Marx.<\/em> (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015) 19.<\/h6>\n
[9]<\/a> Ibid., 56.<\/h6>\n
[10]<\/a> \u201cHeresy,\u201d Wikipedia, https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Heresy (accessed January 24, 2018).<\/h6>\n
[11]<\/a> Jennifer M. Hecht. “How Secular Are Secular Ethics?” The Chronicle of Higher Education 62, no. 24 (2016): B17.<\/h6>\n
[12]<\/a> Ibid.<\/h6>\n
[13]<\/a> Erdozain, Soul of Doubt<\/em>, 187.<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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